Oggy Oggy Oggy
Encyclopedia
The Oggy Oggy Oggy chant
Chant
Chant is the rhythmic speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes to highly complex musical structures Chant (from French chanter) is the rhythmic speaking or singing...

 (alternately spelt Oggie Oggie Oggie), and its numerous variations, are often heard at sporting events, political rallies and around Scout
Scouting
Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth movement with the stated aim of supporting young people in their physical, mental and spiritual development, that they may play constructive roles in society....

 and Guide
Girl Guides
A Guide, Girl Guide or Girl Scout is a member of a section of some Guiding organisations who is between the ages of 10 and 14. Age limits are different in each organisation. It is the female-centred equivalent of the Scouts. The term Girl Scout is used in the United States and several East Asian...

 campfires, primarily in Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 and some Commonwealth nations
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...

.

Max Boyce
Max Boyce
Maxwell Boyce MBE is a Welsh comedian, singer and former coal miner. He rose to fame during the mid-1970s with an act that combined musical comedy with his passion for rugby union and his origins in the mining communities of South Wales...

 popularised the phrase in the 1970s. It is also considered a Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 institution. Superstition holds that the origin of the phrase was as a means for Cornish pasty sellers to communicate to workers that it was lunch time. The reasoning for this belief is the presumption that 'Oggy' is from the Cornish
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...

 hoggan for a pasty
Pasty
A pasty , sometimes known as a pastie or British pasty in the United States, is a filled pastry case, associated in particular with Cornwall in Great Britain. It is made by placing the uncooked filling on a flat pastry circle, and folding it to wrap the filling, crimping the edge at the side or top...

.

Form

The usual form of the chant consists of two groups, one shouting the word "Oggy!" and the other group shouting the word "Oi!" Often a single individual will shout "Oggy" and everyone else will shout the reply. The words are shouted according to the following pattern.
Oggy Oggy Oggy!
Oi Oi Oi!

Oggy Oggy Oggy!
Oi Oi Oi!

Oggy!
Oi!

Oggy!
Oi!

Oggy Oggy Oggy!
Oi Oi Oi!

Origins

One possible theory for the origin of the chant stems from Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

. An Oggy is a slang term for Cornish pasty
Pasty
A pasty , sometimes known as a pastie or British pasty in the United States, is a filled pastry case, associated in particular with Cornwall in Great Britain. It is made by placing the uncooked filling on a flat pastry circle, and folding it to wrap the filling, crimping the edge at the side or top...

 derived from its Cornish name, "hoggan" Another theory originates from Devonport
Devonport, Devon
Devonport, formerly named Plymouth Dock or just Dock, is a district of Plymouth in the English county of Devon, although it was, at one time, the more important settlement. It became a county borough in 1889...

.

Tin-miners' wives or pasty sellers supposedly shouted "Oggy Oggy Oggy" - the response from any hungry miner or labourer would be Oi!, Oi!, Oi!. The chant is also the chorus of a Cornish folk song and has always been heard at Cornish rugby
Cornish rugby
Rugby union in Cornwall is one of the Duchy's most popular sports.-CRFU:The Cornwall Rugby Football Union was formed in 1883. It is a union of 39 rugby union clubs which includes every rugby union club in Cornwall, the open age Cornwall representative side and representative teams at various age...

 matches so this seems the most likely origin.

The Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

 (2004) entry for "Oggy" states: "Oggy, noun. West Country regional (orig. Cornwall) and Navy slang. A Cornish pasty. Probably an alteration of Cornish hoggan pastry, pie (18th century), perhaps cognate with Welsh chwiogen muffin, simnel-cake (1562), of unknown origin."

Members of the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

 claim to have used the chant, or a version of it, since the Second World War.
The 'Oggie, Oggie, Oggie' chant was used by supporters of the Royal Navy's Devonport Field Gun Team. (The field gun competition
Field gun competition
The Royal Navy's field gun competition is a contest between teams from various Royal Navy commands, in which teams of sailors compete to transport a field gun and its equipment over and through a series of obstacles in the shortest time. The competition evolved during the first 6 years of the 20th...

 was disbanded in 1999 after a hundred years of competition).

It was then adopted at British football grounds at some point during the postwar period, and was certainly in common use by the 1960s.

In the 1970s the Welsh
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...

 folk singer and comedian Max Boyce
Max Boyce
Maxwell Boyce MBE is a Welsh comedian, singer and former coal miner. He rose to fame during the mid-1970s with an act that combined musical comedy with his passion for rugby union and his origins in the mining communities of South Wales...

 popularised the chant in order to excite the crowd at his concerts. Boyce was also a big rugby union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 fan, and through him it then began to be adopted by Welsh rugby union crowds at international matches. Soon it spread to rugby crowds at club level and eventually to many other sporting occasions at all levels.

The chant was also used by Coventry City football fans during the 1980s and 1990s in appreciation to then goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic
Steve Ogrizovic
Steven "Oggy" Ogrizovic is a former English goalkeeper who achieved fame during 16 years at Coventry City...

 who had been nicknamed 'Oggy'.

Use within Scouting and Guiding

Oggy Oggy Oggy has long been a major chant within Scouting and Guiding, especially within the UK. "An Oggy" as it is termed within Troops and Units is usually used at Scouting events and as a way of expressing thanks to those within and outside Scouting.

Cultural references

In BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 television series The Office
The Office (UK TV series)
The Office is a British sitcom television series that was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 9 July 2001. Created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the programme is about the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough branch of the fictitious...

, Gareth Keenan
Gareth Keenan
Gareth Keenan is a fictional paper salesman on BBC's comedy The Office. He is portrayed in the series by Mackenzie Crook as a gaunt, self-important team leader proud of his alleged lieutenant status in the Territorial Army...

 (Mackenzie Crook
Mackenzie Crook
Paul Mackenzie Crook is a British actor and comedian. He is best known for playing Gareth Keenan in The Office and Ragetti in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.-Life and career:...

) recited the chant when answering a telephone call from his friend "The Oggmonster" (Stephen Merchant
Stephen Merchant
Stephen James Merchant is an English writer, director, radio presenter, comedian, and actor. He is best known for his collaborations with Ricky Gervais, as the co-writer and co-director of the popular British sitcom The Office, as the co-writer, co-director and a co-star of Extras, and as the...

).

Doug, a college instructor in the 2007 UK television series Skins
Skins (TV series)
Skins is a BAFTA award-winning British teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England, through the two years of college. The controversial plot line explores issues such as dysfunctional families, mental illness , adolescent sexuality, substance abuse and death...

, regularly calls out "Oggy Oggy Oggy!" to his students, to little avail.

Members of Sussex Bonfire Societies
Sussex Bonfire Societies
The Sussex Bonfire Societies are responsible for the series of bonfire festivals around Central/Eastern Sussex along with parts of Surrey and Kent from September - November....

 recite the chant when passing pubs and large crowds.

Variations

Several variations of the "Oggy" chant have arisen as its cultural significance and recognition has grown. In the early 1970s, Chelsea F.C.
Chelsea F.C.
Chelsea Football Club are an English football club based in West London. Founded in 1905, they play in the Premier League and have spent most of their history in the top tier of English football. Chelsea have been English champions four times, FA Cup winners six times and League Cup winners four...

 soccer fans changed it from "Oggie" to "Ozzie," in honour of Peter Osgood
Peter Osgood
Peter Leslie Osgood was an English footballer who was active during the 1960s and 1970s. He is best remembered for representing Chelsea and Southampton at club level, and was also capped four times by England in the early 1970s.-Chelsea:Born in a small road named Kentons Lane in Windsor, Osgood...

, the soccer player. When Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

 came to power in Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 in 1979 a variation of the chant ("Maggie Maggie Maggie, Out Out Out!
Maggie Out
"Maggie Out" was a chant popular during the Miners' Strike, student grant protests, Poll Tax protests and other public demonstrations that fell within the time when Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom....

"
) was adopted by some of her opponents.

Another variation is the "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi" chant. It had been heard at Australian sporting events as early as 1987. The chant had found widespread popularity by the time of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

At Arizona Diamondbacks games during the 2008-09 seasons, fans would shout "Augie Augie Augie, Oi Oi Oi" in reference to utility infielder Augie Ojeda
Augie Ojeda
Octavio "Augie" Ojeda is an American professional baseball infielder who is a free agent...

. (It is worth noting that in many dialects of American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....

, "Augie" and "Oggy" are homophones).

The chant has also been adopted by the fans of newly promoted English rugby union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 premiership
Guinness Premiership
The English Premiership, also currently known as the Aviva Premiership because of the league's sponsorship by Aviva, is a professional league competition for rugby union football clubs in the top division of the English rugby system. There are twelve clubs in the Premiership...

 side, the Exeter Chiefs
Exeter Chiefs
Exeter Rugby Club are a rugby union club based in Exeter, Devon.The Exeter club was formed around 1871 and played its first match in 1873. The first team has been rebranded as the Exeter Chiefs and play in a strip of Black , White ....

. They use the same form, but replace the word Oi with the word Chiefs.

The chant is also popular in Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

, Canada, where a variation has fans of the Calgary Flames
Calgary Flames
The Calgary Flames are a professional ice hockey team based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. They are members of the Northwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League . The club is the third major-professional ice hockey team to represent the city of Calgary, following the...

 shout "Iggy, Iggy, Iggy, Oi Oi Oi" when Jarome Iginla
Jarome Iginla
Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis Iginla is a Canadian professional ice hockey player for the Calgary Flames of the National Hockey League . A six-time NHL All-Star, he is the Flames' all-time leader in goals, points, and games played, and is second in assists to Al MacInnis...

 fought or scored in a game. This was especially popular during his 50 goal season in the 2007-08 NHL season.

In Sweden a popular version of the chant is "Bira Bira Bira, Bärs Bärs Bärs". It is a drinking chant in which every word just means Beer.

A more recent variant of the chant has been adopted by fans of the British male singer and former runner up of The X Factor
The X Factor (UK)
The X Factor is a British television music competition to find new singing talent. Created by Simon Cowell, it began in September 2004 and is contested by aspiring singers drawn from public auditions. It is the originator of the international X Factor franchise. The seven series of the show to date...

, Olly Murs
Olly Murs
Oliver Stanley "Olly" Murs is an English singer-songwriter and TV presenter. Murs rose to fame after being the runner-up on the sixth series of The X Factor...

. Here, it is changed slightly so that the chant becomes "Olly, Olly, Olly, Oi Oi Oi", and it is often chanted at his live concert tours/public appearances or incited by Murs himself at such events as these.

External links

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